quarterly-report.com Political and Social Commentary by James R. Audet

Wednesday, July 20, 2011
42nd Anniversary of Apollo 11 moon landing.

I grew up with the space program.  I saw the launch of Alan Shepard in Freedom 7 while sitting in a grammar school classroom.  This was followed by Gus Grissom's launch and later by John Glenn's launch.  Glenn was to orbit the earth, the United States finally matching the first flight of the Soviet Union.  That was the last launch I watched in school.  The novelty of space launches had grown thin.

A similar occurrence took place with the Apollo program.  The world watched Armstrong and Aldrin walk on the moon.  My family was gathered to watch the low resolution, grainy, black and white images from Apollo 11's landing site in the Sea of Tranquility.  For Apollo 12, we had no pictures from the moon.  Astronaut Beam pointed the camera at the sun and destroyed the tube used to capture video.  By the time Apollo 13 launched, America's fascination with a moon landing was fading.  The catastrophic explosion of an oxygen tank on the spacecraft caused the world to once again be drawn to space flight.  Apollo 14 received some attention, principally to see if America could once again reach the moon successfully.  Interest again dropped off.  Later landings received less and less coverage.   Even the introduction of the Lunar Rover, a California style "dune buggy" did little to increase the public's interest of astronauts on the moon's surface.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed what little coverage was offered.  The last three moon missions, Apollo's 18, 19 and 20 were cancelled, allegedly because of budget cuts, even though most of the hardware had been built.

Subsequent missions took place in earth orbit.  The Skylab (the first orbiting space station) and Apollo-Soyuz Test Project received little media attention.  Manned space flight ended with the July 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

Projects Mercury and Gemini were successful programs.  Apollo was mixed.  Apollo 1 and its three man crew was destroyed in a launch pad fire and Apollo 13's accident nearly cost its three man crew their lives.  Both the Apollo 1 and 13 accidents were a direct result of poor engineering caused by haste to get the spacecraft hardware built.

The Space Transportation System or Space Shuttle, program was announced in 1972.  Its goals were lofty, principally less cost to put men and  satellites into space.  The first orbiter, Columbia, was launched on April 12, 1981, and signaled the United States' return to manned space flight.  The fifty launches per year objective quickly fell by the wayside.  Costs per launch were higher than budgeted.  On-board computers were obsolete with the first launch of the Shuttle.  The launch of satellites from the Shuttle were plagued with problems.  The one launch I was invited by NASA to attend, STS-41B, the ill-fated Challenger, failed in its mission to get to two satellites into geosynchronous orbit.  The most launches NASA was able to accomplish was nine in 1985.

The cost of the Shuttle program has been estimated at 200 billion dollars.  What the United States get for this expenditure?  I submit very little.  Two orbiters, Challenger and Columbia were destroyed in-flight, fourteen astronauts were killed.  Five technical people associated with Shuttle launches have also died.  After the Challenger loss, President Reagan eliminated the Shuttle for future satellite deployments.  This left the Shuttle fleet without a job.

The loss of two orbiters was, as was seen with the Apollo program, a result of NASA pushing hard to make launches.  As was revealed in the Rogers Commission report on the Challenger loss and the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report on the Columbia loss, NASA had not learned from the mistakes of the Apollo program as well as from the loss of Challenger.

The STS mission after the Columbia loss was to ferry modules and hardware for the International Space Station (ISS).  Although the construction of the hardware and financing was an international effort, the United States absorbed a majority of the costs.  Based on 135 shuttle launches, a Shuttle mission cost 1.5 billion dollars.  The US costs for the ISS are somewhat difficult to get a handle on because of the use of the Shuttle to ferry ISS equipment into space.  Based on figures reported by Wikipedia, the ISS cost, including prior costs associated with the development of an orbiting laboratory, was about 65 billion dollars.  Wasted dollars.

What is the point of the ISS?  Principally, the goal appears to be whether humans can tolerate the physiological effects of microgravity, solar wind, and cosmic rays.  These issues are a concern for manned missions beyond the moon.  We are not going back to the moon, nor are we are going to other places in the solar system.  The United States has not the funds for manned space flight.

Nevertheless, President Bush announced in 2005, funding for the Constellation program.  The program was to go back to the moon, maybe an asteroid landing, and planning for a mission to Mars.  Although NASA said that the cost of the program would be about $230 billion (in 2004 dollars) through 2025, NASA is notorious for going over budget.  President Obama did not include funds in his 2011 budget for the Constellation project, but backtracked under Congressional pressure to keep some funds flowing for parts of the program.  This was a mistake.

Let private industry continue on its path to get Americans to the ISS.  NASA has provided some capital to various companies for the development of spacecraft.  However, I believe the effort is misguided.  The ISS is a meaningless platform.  There is little that will be learned from the ISS that is already known.

What is left for NASA is unmanned, robotic exploration of other planetary objects.  The list of places to go is running short.  Most of the planets in the solar system have been visited by spacecraft.  Exploration of Mars with Spirit and Opportunity was so successful as to eliminate the need for a manned expedition to the planet.  

I regret the loss of jobs with the loss of manned space flight.  Considering the US school system can not teach math and science to school children leaves the country with a continuing deficit in engineers.  So even with the over enthusiastic goal of going to Mars, it is unlikely the US would have the technical personnel to make a program work.

It appears that NASA is a dinosaur, destined to fade into oblivion.  Apollo 11 was America's finest moment in space flight.  Let us leave it at that.

Click on this sentence for the terms that govern your use of this web site.